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Episode 170: 5 Business Systems Every Lawyer Needs
Having business systems (also known as business processes or systematizing) is a game-changer for you and your practice. It increases productivity, enables you to delegate more and improves client experience.
But where should you get started? Which business systems are the best ones to begin with?
Listen to learn my top 5 places for implementing business systems into your law practice.
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Episode Transcript
[00:01:01] Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Life & Law Podcast. This is your host, Heather Moulder. And today we are talking about something that is actually quite important. Systemization can be a huge game changer. Here’s why.
Having good systems helps you to delegate way more. Having good systems helps others to know what they’re supposed to be doing when things need to be done by, and the process by which they should be doing something. It helps to set standards, it helps to get better work product. It’s just so very helpful, and it really allows you to give more and more away that you really don’t need or shouldn’t be doing.
It allows others more freedom and autonomy so that they can step up. And that frees up more time for you to do the work you really wanna be doing, need to be doing, et cetera.
So systemization can sometimes sound a little bit boring, right? When I say, today we’re going to talk about business systems or business processes. But I promise they’re anything but. Now I have covered, in a more general manner, what business systems are, how they work and how to put them together, and really what to think about. And I’m going to put a link to that show in the show notes because if you missed it, you’re going to want to go back and listen to that. It is complimentary to today’s episode.
But today I really wanted to talk about some places to get started because a lot of times I hear from new clients that, you know, they really want to have more systems. They might have a couple in place, but they’re not quite sure where exactly to go and how to best get started and what to do.
Today, I wanted to cover five places for you to get started with implementing your own business systems. We’re going to talk about intake, billing, collections, workflow management (which is really an area that a lot of things can go into – so that’s pretty exciting, and client feedback (something a lot of people do not think of).
Must-Have Items For A Good Business System
Now, before we get into each of these five areas, I want you to think through what a good process / a good business system requires.
#1: Documentation
So it first and foremost requires really good documentation. And by documentation, what I mean is written procedures, written timetables that are documented somewhere so that anybody who’s picking up a task along the way or helping with it, even if they’ve never done anything on this before, can go to that and get most of their questions answered and see, okay, what’s been done, what needs to be done, what’s next, what are the requirements, etcetera?
[00:03:54] Can somebody who has never done this before understand by looking at this documentation, what it entails, what the deadlines are, and so on, just by reading the documentation, you need to have that. That’s part of putting a good system together.
#2: Workflow
The second thing is you want to make sure that it fully encompasses the workflow. So that documentation needs to have all the steps and all the tasks under each step and the timelines, right. Nobody can read your mind. And again, anybody picking up midstream or anybody new to the process or the procedure needs to quickly be able to see what’s been done, what has not been done, what’s to come next, who’s in charge.
All of the workflow steps need to be in this documentation. And when I talk about documentation, often we’re talking about kind of that starting point, the template that has this. But it’s going to evolve and change over time, FYI.
And also each time that we utilize it, for a different matter, a different client, whatever it is, you’re going to have a separate document, right? You’re going to take that template and you’re going to utilize it for that. And you’re going to log, people are going to log in there, what they’re doing, what they’ve done, and check it off. That’s the easiest way to keep track.
So you want to make sure that workflow is as seamless as possible. And note as efficient as possible. And that’s why this will change, because we often come up with these business systems and business processes, and we can overcomplicate things or we learn things along the way, or we get what I’m going to talk about next, new tech that changes it or simplifies it, which is great. So you’re going to always be changing these over time.
#3: Utilization of Technology (Where Needed)
So this last thing is tech, right? How can you utilize the tech you already have to improve your efficiency and accuracy? And also, what tech might you consider adding now or into the future to ensure better efficiency, accuracy, etcetera of this business system? Tech can be incredibly helpful.
Now, we do not use tech just to be techies, just to utilize it. Right. You want to ensure it actually works for what you need and want. So it doesn’t have to be fancy. It’s getting it done and getting the job done right.
All right, so those are the three things to really keep in mind.
Where To Start Implementing Business Systems: 5 Areas
Now, let’s go into the five different areas that I want you to get started on putting your business systems together.
Area number one is intake.
So in my personal experience, I have found that way too many attorneys get way too involved in intake when they really don’t need to be. So you want a pretty simple system for opening a new matter that doesn’t have to involve you in most of these steps.
Now, I’m not saying you’re not going to be involved in any of them. You probably will. You probably need to be, but everything doesn’t need to be you. So think about how you can systematize and get the right people and who those people would be involved on:
- Gathering the information that’s needed to run conflicts,
- Running conflicts,
- Opening the matter,
- Reviewing and clearing conflicts. Obviously, that is where attorneys really are needed. A lot of times is the reviewing and reaching out and helping to clear conflicts. But this other stuff, you can have somebody else do most of it.
- Drafting the engagement letter. Having a template for your main engagement letters and the types of engagements you do is incredibly helpful. That’s part of systematizing, by the way, and putting business systems together is when you need templates, you have them, they’re easy, they’re go to. It’s fill in the blank.
- [00:07:37] Getting it sent out and signed, following up to get it signed.
Those are the things that take place in intake, and there’s no reason why you can’t systematize it. Have a document that’s very clear of: In this instance, we use this document. In this instance, we use this document. I have plenty of clients who do this. It is very easy. And then you have somebody else doing every single step that you don’t really need to be involved in. This gives them more autonomy. This makes the process more seamless. It helps to get matters open more quickly, by the way. Because you, the lawyer who’s doing all this other stuff and working on all these other matters, is not so involved.
You’re only involved on the need to be involved items, which is usually the conflict review and clearing. Okay, so intake was number one.
Number two is billing.
So the biggest thing here is having the right software in place for billing purposes. And the right software is really going to be different based on your firm and your firm clients and what your clients want and need and require for billing purposes. But you want to ensure that you have the right software or tech in place to meet pretty much all of your clients’ needs, and that you don’t go outside the box and agree to a bunch of things with different clients that your software or your tech cannot handle. That one is a big one, y’all.
FYI, billing is not part of intake. Intake is really that new client comes in, you clear conflicts, you get the engagement letter going, all of that. But then the billing comes into play, and billing has really two parts. It’s the beginning stages where how you set them up in your system, how you ensure that it’s done right. This, again, really doesn’t need, nor should it be, an attorney.
[00:09:30] Hopefully, you have accounting and billing people who can do this for you, who you can then talk with and have a system, a business system around reaching out, finding out the right person to reach out to within the new client, getting the billing set up, making sure it’s set up properly, so that all you have to do is bill the work, run the bill, take a quick review, and then ensure that your people are actually sending the bill out as they are supposed to.
Which then leads to collections (as number 3).
[00:10:02] So this is not the same as billing. It hopefully goes without saying, but I do find that a lot of people get these two. They put them hand in hand. Not the same.
For a collections business system to work you need this one thing in place first.
[00:10:13] It may be the same people are dealing with it, sometimes not. It kind of depends. But when it comes to collections, you need to first have a very clear collections policy, and really a process relating to that policy.
And what I mean by that is, what is your timing? What is late? If it’s not paid within seven days, ten days, 15 days, 30 days, what is it? What is considered late?
And you want to write out the policy, and you really want that to be part of intake, honestly, you want those policies attached to your engagement letters. You want to be able to inform people at the outset. Here is how we bill. Here is what we expect. Now, again, this is a general thing for clients who don’t have requirements. Sometimes we end up with clients that basically have their own, you know, hey, if we hire you, this is how we pay. So again, it all goes back to the tech and making sure that your system, your software, your tech related to billing and collections is set up properly so that you get dings when things are considered late.
[00:11:24] And once they’re considered late, you have a policy relating to that. If it is more than seven days late, if it is more than 30 days late, whatever that is for how they should expect you to be corresponding with them and reaching out.
And that reach out initially probably doesn’t need to be the attorney. It can be your billing specialist. It can be somebody in accounting who deals with collections. It all depends on the firm. They all deal with it a little bit differently.
But have somebody that does an email and maybe have a template that you approve. This is part of your business system for collections, right? That’s related to, okay, we sent it out 30 days ago, hasn’t been paid. It’s this much overdue, that kind of a thing. Reminder, emails.
After a time, it usually steps up. Right. When is that? And this is where your policy is really important. When is that time for you to start getting involved or for somebody in accounting to pick up the phone and, you know, speak to them about, hey, is this lost? What’s going on? How can we work with you now?
Collections Tip: Don’t assume.
Don’t assume something is wrong, by the way. It’s just a little note. I’ve had a lot of clients who have come to me. I had somebody in my mastermind not long ago, actually. Well, two masterminds ago, I guess it really was. But he had this one client who paid pretty much like clockwork, but then he stopped and he let it go like eight months, which is a really long time, y’all. The longer you let something go without ever saying anything, the less likely it is to be paid or at least collected in full. Don’t let that happen. But he was assuming something was wrong.
[00:13:06] They’re cash strapped or they’re not going to pay or they don’t like the work or that, you know, there were different things that all going on in his mind. Don’t ever assume. Pick up that phone and find out what’s going on.
[00:13:21] I will tell you. In that instance, they were having some issues with being able to pay. They were cash strapped at the time. It ended up working out fine, but he was able to put them on a payment plan. They did get it paid. Everything worked out. This was our chance. He was in my mastermind, as I said earlier, for us to work together on putting his collections policy in place and putting some business systems in place around those collections so that that type of thing wouldn’t happen again.
[00:13:51] And I’ve seen this happen everywhere, like he was a solo person. But I see this happening, and I saw this happening back when I practiced with a lot of attorneys in big firms where they just let these things sit and they never follow up.
Have a collections system, a business system around your collections, so it doesn’t go too long. This is hugely important. You can massively increase collections by doing this, if you don’t already. All right.
So then we’re going to get to business system number four that I want you to think through, and I’m going to skip forward to what I listed last first, because this is pretty simple. And the next one, there’s a little more discussion with it.
The next business system is client feedback.
This is an area that a lot of people don’t think about, and I think that’s a really, you’re missing something.
What kind of feedback are you currently getting from clients? Now, some of this is going to depend on your practice, right. So there’s different kinds of feedback you could be getting.
Figure out what type of feedback you need/want (and when you want to gather it).
If you have mostly clients that stick with you over a long period of time, you could do it semiannually or annually. You could do it matter by matter or matter by matter only for specific types of higher, you know, bigger deal matters. Right. You could get feedback, and I do highly recommend this, from new clients. After a specific period of time or after, you know, your first matter is ended. Again, it’s very much going to depend on your practice, the type of practice you have, the type of clients you have. But there’s a lot of different ways to look at this.
So first you need to figure out, okay, what makes most sense given my practice and what kind of feedback do I want to get.
Have set questions (a form) that can be sent out by others.
[00:15:32] And you want to create some type of a form that’s kind of automatic that somebody else, not you, sends out immediately after the matter is closed, the thing is done, the time period has passed.
Now, when it comes to client feedback, it depends, again on your practice, your clients, and how you’re getting the feedback. But if there is a way to at least occasionally get anonymous feedback, that can be really helpful, because sometimes clients won’t tell you everything if they know that you’re going to know who’s giving the feedback. So some form of annual feedback that is anonymous, that generally goes out to clients and doesn’t track who is exactly giving that feedback. I actually recommend if that works for your practice and your clients because it can be incredibly helpful in telling you where you might need to make some course corrections and some tweaks on client management, on how you approach things and so on.
Ask open-ended questions (and only a few).
Also, just a note, when it comes to feedback, I mean, this isn’t a whole thing on feedback, but be sure that you’re asking good questions. Really think through the questions that you’re asking them. I find that it is better to ask just a couple of deeper questions that allows them to answer free form that you will get better feedback. This is my personal experience. Let me note that it’s not everybody’s opinion, but it is mine, based on my own experience, than it is to ask questions that are yes or no, or even ask questions that have multiple choice answers.
[00:17:12] Do not, and I repeat, do not send so many questions that nobody’s going to answer it. This should be something that if they want to answer it, because these are busy people, it doesn’t take them more than five to six minutes to actually do it. Now they may take longer because they choose to do so. So three to five questions max, the less the better. And don’t be afraid to ask for what’s going right or have kind of a catch all question at the end that says, what else do you want me to know? So that’s my two cents on client feedback.
[00:17:50] Now to the final area. And most of the areas I’ve done so far really do relate to people who are a little bit more senior. Right. You’re not dealing with intake and billing until you’re a partner or close to it. Usually you’re not dealing with collections either. And feedback.
[00:18:08] You could probably get feedback by the time you’re a mid level, at least with your clients. So I actually recommend you do it. But most people do not get it and sometimes they don’t have the opportunity to, depending on who the clients are and what your role is until you get even more senior. But the next one is for everyone. Okay?
The next areas for business systems is workflow management.
So what I mean by that is there are probably pretty regular tasks and or documents that you are in charge of or that come up in your practice that could be systematized that maybe you don’t need to be doing, and maybe you could be delegating more. So think through those types of things so that you can start offloading more off of your plate and onto other people.
Business systems in those areas really help you to save more time, to not have to do the things that you find you don’t really need to be doing, that maybe your billing rate is too high to be doing and you feel bad about doing, and yet you still do it because you think, well, I’ll just do it better or I’ll get it done more quickly. No, it’s time to start delegating. And the best way to do that is through a business system that relates to that.
Remember, you document what it is you document, you know, the procedures and the process and the things people need to be thinking about, the resources, where to go looking, who to ask questions of, the steps that go along with it. And then you also have timelines in there. So this helps you to delegate more effectively, and then it helps the person you’re delegating to to know what it is that is expected of them.
Now, it doesn’t mean you don’t still have a conversation, by the way. You don’t still, you know, keep your office open for questions, but this allows you to give away more while trusting that the work is going to come back in really good shape. And it also allows other people to then be able to do more and to have more freedom and to have more autonomy because they’ve got something that’s giving them kind of the basics of what needs to be done, how to do it, how to think through it, when to get it done by. They can come ask you questions if things come up, but then they have more free flow and they know their timeline and you’re not bugging them all the time.
So workflow management is really about, well, at least one avenue of it is really about enabling you to delegate more and to delegate to more people. And then doing it while still maintaining control over what’s going on in a way that’s not too controlling, if you get my meaning.
The other way to think of workflow management is, well, there’s two other ways, actually. The other way when it comes to dealing with other people is when you have larger deals or cases and you need some type of documentation that really charts the flow of all of the different things going on.
So for closings in the corporate finance practice that I had, we had document checklists that basically listed out all the documents and who was in charge of them. And it had timelines and it had notes in there. We also listed all of the due diligence that needed to be done and all the things we needed to order and get basically everything that was necessary to get to closing and to do our jobs correctly. And well, they were all in that checklist, and that checklist made it very clear who was in charge of what and the timing and where we were and the notes.
This can be done for practically anything on the transactional side and often a lot of things on the litigation side as well. So that is a way to kind of keep on track with the team and allow people more autonomy to take over more functions and then also knowing where things are, you can go to this document and see what’s going on.
The third area of workflow management that I think is massively underutilized is when you’re thinking about processes like a business process or procedure for yourself when doing something that you do a lot. So maybe you draft a certain type of document, or maybe you have to analyze certain types of issues, and you want to put together, like a workflow or a thinking flowchart of the questions to ask, the things that you need to gather, the resources that you have available and where to go.
So, for example, I had a client who came to me last year around needing to systematize how she approaches writing. I think it was complaints. And there were certain questions she wanted to answer. There were certain resources that were available that she wanted to make sure she checked on. There were, you know, other people to check in with. There were things that she wanted to do that she was noticing that were pretty much regular every time it came up, no matter what was going on, a way of thinking and doing.
And so she put her own business system or business process together for that. The beauty of this is it helps save you time if this is something you’re doing over and over again. And then as you progress, and you’re not the one to actually be needing to do that work anymore, and it starts to go to somebody else. It helps you to train others because you can go back to that and you can show them what you’ve done, and you can talk through it, and they can learn it.
[00:23:45] All right, so those are the first five areas for you to start thinking about where to put some business systems into place for your law practice. Hopefully, you got some good ideas today, and maybe you got some ideas for making some of the systems that you currently have in place even better.
[00:24:04] That is it for today. We will be back next week. Bye for now.
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I’m Heather Moulder, a former Big Law partner who traded in my multi-million dollar practice to help lawyers achieve balanced success. Because success shouldn’t mean having to sacrifice your health, relationships or sanity.
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